


Namesake

by Sanj



Category: Brotherhood of the Wolf
Genre: Other, Yuletide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-01-01
Updated: 2007-01-01
Packaged: 2017-10-02 15:45:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,909
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8014
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sanj/pseuds/Sanj
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Note: refers to canon pairings, but canon includes a case of incestuous rape. It's neither slash nor gen nor good red herring, really, but then, neither is the source itself.</p>
    </blockquote>





	Namesake

**Author's Note:**

> Note: refers to canon pairings, but canon includes a case of incestuous rape. It's neither slash nor gen nor good red herring, really, but then, neither is the source itself.

_Gévaudan, 1789_

They have just taken away Thomas, Marquis d'Apcher, who has been a second father to me. M. Rappel, the steward here, says that they may not even bother to imprison or try him. More and more of the nobility are slain without trial, or even recourse to reason.

As evidence of this -- they have now captured the Marquis, who has been a good and honorable shepherd of his people for thirty years, and was even something of a hero in Gévaudan as late as last year.

It is said by some he slew a demon.

Maman was right, to send me here as a poor relation, to listen and watch and play governess to M. Rappel's children. Had I been Jeannette de Fronsac, daughter of _la Morangias_, I would have been sheltered and petted -- and perhaps even now would be led to the guillotine. It's possible the madness extends even to the daughter of an exiled countess.

Instead, I have learned much of what is done behind the scenes of a great household, and have watched the revolution take place with my own eyes -- here, and in Paris, too, before the city became too dangerous.

O God! I pray that Thomas may still be able to extricate himself. He has many good friends, and stranger things have happened, certainly, in Gévaudan.

I could not help it: when he descended the stairs, so proud and calm, I knelt at his feet, and he raised me up. I think he was pleased by the gesture, but I could not meet his eye; he touched my cheek in a kind of farewell.

When the guards said it was safe, I made it to my room, but I did not stop shaking for over an hour. Thomas's peaceful surrender earned the rest of us our lives, but at such cost. I am weeping yet. I feel so powerless, but what am I to do against a thousand men? Not even Papa would attempt it.

And Thomas made my duty clear; M. Rappel has handed me the Marquis' account of the Beast of Gévaudan. I am to bring it safely to Italy, where Father's friend Signora S-- will have a copy made for her students. The originals I am to bring to Maman.

The Marquis writes, even in his memoir, that he is the last to know the truth of the story. He hid my parents safely away in Dakar, even as the mobs marched in the night to his home.

What I wonder is why it is necessary. Neither Papa nor Maman have ever seemed particularly fragile. But Thomas is always a protector; always that first.

Oh, dear Thomas.

Did I write, before, of when we first met? Looking back, I said he received me warmly, and I see many accounts of our lessons. But I never wrote down the curious thing he said after I had been here for a few weeks.

The Marquis had -- no, _has! _ \-- a great love of learning and culture, and his collection far surpasses anything we had in Dakar. Indeed, it rivals what I was able to access in Paris.

It was perhaps a month before I made it to the high back shelves in his study, to the great old leather _grimoires_ in their broken Latin.

"Not so fast," he said to me, crossing the room at a pace that surprised me. "Those are not for study, not by you and not yet."

I pouted at him and called him a mean old man. We teased each other, even early on -- what he calls our _fablieau_, the young girl and the old man set together. I was not sent to be his courtesan and he knows it, but it amuses him that we play the game nonetheless.

But for once he was quite serious, and did not wish to even speak of what knowledge the books held, although he acknowledged this would make me even more curious. "You are always like your father, Jeannette," he said, "forever wanting knowledge you should not have or keep."

"My father is a good and wise man, Marquis," I said, suddenly every bit as serious, for no one speaks ill of Papa in my presence.

"Did I say _your father_?" He blinked and frowned at me. "Never mind, I apologize. I meant, _your uncle._"

"These books belonged to Mani?" I asked. "He was a sorcerer, was he not?" My father's blood brother, a real Red Indian from the Americas, had died before I was born. I had grown up on the tales of his bravery and cleverness, but I never knew him to learn his magic from books, like a wizard or alchemist.

But then I realized he meant my namesake, my mother's brother, a famous hunter who had died on safari in Africa. I told him this, which was what little I knew of the man.

"Not so," Thomas, "but perhaps better to think of it that way. His soul, the priests might say, died in Africa, and perhaps that is true. But his body lived on for many years, and he was a gentleman of my acquaintance here in Gévaudan, before your father came."

Something in the way he spoke made me shiver. "Did he truly have no soul?"

"I don't know much of souls," said Thomas, "I have never pretended to be a theologian. I knew Jean-François as a raconteur, an unstoppable hunter, and a cynic. Charming if he chose, which was rarely. I thought little enough of him -- though I admired his sister greatly." He winked at me; it is said that I resemble my mother.

He continued: "Later, we found out, these books were his, and he had learned some dark sorcery in his travels. But perhaps better to think of him lost in Africa, certainly, than speak much of the time after his return home."

"Did he go mad?" I asked. "From reading these books?"

"Does knowledge cause madness? Perhaps. Nevertheless, I have kept the books." Thomas turned me about and patted me on the shoulders. "But practice of what is in them, _ma petite_, that could cause madness. So we will read these together, later, when your Latin is better, and we can protect each other from the taint of evil."

We never did get very far with my Latin, and now he is gone, perhaps never to return. Perhaps to die before morning. If I could choose wisely, I would select a couple of volumes for la Signora, exiled to her little house in Siena.

They say la Signora was not only the wisest and greatest lady in all Italy, but that she was once a courtesan, and even more beautiful than my Maman. I asked Papa once, which was more beautiful, for he had been friends (by which he meant, I knew, lovers) with Signora S--.

"Which is more beautiful, Jeanne-Françoise?" he asked me in return. "The stars through the trees, or the sunrise over the ocean?"

He had, at the time, had some wine to drink. He liked to reminisce and tell me stories of his travels with Mani, of the court in Paris, of the people he had known while courting Maman in Gévaudan.

But of my uncle, Jean-François, we never spoke, and I had never thought they had known each other.

* * *

_Signora Sylvia Allegretti, Siena  
to Chevalier Grégoire de Fronsac, Dakar  
April, 1790_  
My dear Grégoire,

My dearest thanks to you and to your Marianne for allowing young Jeannette to stay awhile in my little household. I suspect Jeannette is very much like her mother, though I have never had the pleasure of Mme. Marianne's acquaintance. Still, Jeannette is every bit _une Morangias, _ though of course with your own sense of honor deeply instilled.

I enclose poor Thomas' account of those days in Gévaudan, for your safekeeping. He made of me something of a mystery -- yet I am surprised to find he knew quite so many secrets of your bedchamber. _Serpent sage_, as Mani said; Thomas always had his ways of knowing. I merely find myself surprised he knew so much, and yet suspected so little.

Reading of these days, I remember when my looking-glass did not frown at me, before your lady stole your heart. I was fond of you, Grégoire, more fond even than I allowed. But I could not bear Jean-François' hopes that I would guide you away from his sister -- you were, in a sense, her one chance of escape.

I have seen many frightful things, both in the service of the Holy Father and in my subsequent exile. But nothing frightened me more than Jean-François de Morangias -- what he was capable of. That he was no more, in the end, than a vessel, ready to be possessed by Sardis' Brotherhood, and by the demons that assailed him.

I know you wish to ask it, so I will tell you: I see much of Jean-François in his young namesake. Blood will tell. (I can count, Grégoire, as well as you. I knew Jean-François, perhaps too well, and now I have Thomas' account to confirm my suspicions.) She is, like him, clever, suspicious, and observant. She is, like her mother, lovely and willful. And she is, like you, honorable -- even to a fault.

I know you have always been concerned for Jeannette. For her soul, if you believe in such a thing. (I think you do, though it may be some spirit of Mani's gods, or some theology you have found on your voyages.) But I think she is, in the end, her mother's child -- no lackwit, which is a blessing, and a credit to your good heart.

In what will no doubt be some relief to you -- though it is a grave disappointment to her! -- she does not have the reserve of a good courtesan. But she is clever and well-read, and can make herself unobtrusive. I believe she will be a great deal of use, in years to come, and that I can make something of her education. She has a fine ear for languages -- though her Latin is quite reprehensible. (I also enclose a new edition of Catullus for your sons' tutor.)

Jeannette will be home by next Easter, as promised. But I beg again -- I would rather you and your family ventured north for a visit. I am confined here by illness, but would gladly see you again... and make better acquaintance of your Marianne.

If Thomas knew this, and could speak of it, than I will say it, as well. Jean-François loved Marianne beyond all reason; I think she loved, in return, the man he had been. Perhaps she was drawn to you because you and he were not so different. (Both of you visited my bedchamber -- it is a place more telling than any confessional.) I would like to talk with her. To hear the truth from her own lips.

I have always been jealous, I think -- not only of your love for her, which was so forthright and pure, but of her brother's regard as well. His obsession with her was so poisonous a possession that it had its own appeal. I know you understand such things, and that we can be honest with each other.

What I don't know is if you can bear to think of your Marianne as tainted, as willingly carrying her brother's child -- for love of who he was, or who he could have been.

In Thomas's manuscript, perhaps, you both can find some answers, or some absolution.

As for Jean-François, _lux perpetua luceat ei_.

Always,  
\--S.

* * *

_At sea aboard the_ Frère Loup, _1768_

Marianne is awake again tonight, and is above; no doubt she is pacing the decks, which unsettles the seamen. If I go to her, she will accuse me of hovering. Instead I am sitting up, waiting for her to return to our bed.

I am still startled that I have married; I am more startled yet that the magic of matrimony seems to have worked. I look at other women now with only an artist's eye -- a face or body I would love to paint, perhaps. This is true even of Sylvia (though she and I have agreed, in a series of terse letters, to maintain a correspondance.)

When I returned to Gévaudan that last time, I feared that Marianne would never recover. And when she heard of the death of Jean-François, I feared she might never forgive me his murder. Instead, she said: "I wish I had killed him with my own bare hands. That monster was not my brother. Jean-François never returned from Africa."

And that was the last she has spoken of him, but I know there was far more she did not say.

He raped her, left her for dead, and prayed with his last, insane breath that she would join him in hell.

I don't know how to speak of it with her. I don't have the words; I'm an artist, a naturalist; despite my strange adventures, I am a man who seeks beauty. Everything that happened in Gévaudan was twisted, deformed -- far outside my experience, and I am still not certain how I survived the ordeal.

Mani would say that _les Morangias_ and the rest of the Brotherhood were themselves unnatural, and that their deeds reflected their selves. No doubt philosophers in Paris now say the same thing, but without his directness of speech or his lack of doubt.

My God, I miss him beyond anything I can imagine. I feel naked walking about without his steps behind me. I could not have been blessed enough, perhaps, to have both Mani and Marianne by my side at the same time.

But I can wish it were so.

Two days ago, when we reached open water, I let his ashes scatter over the sea. I think he would have preferred that blessing to leaving his remains in cursed Gévaudan, or taking the ashes to yet another foreign shore. But then, Mani was always content to be where he was, content to do what occupied him.

And to observe; always that. I still feel his eyes watching everywhere; it is as though I can hear what he might say, quietly in my ear, in his native tongue.

Just now he would say, _your lady is pregnant, and the child is not yours, and this is why Marianne walks at night, filled with terrible dreams and fear. _

I am certain of the matter. But I have no notion of how to ask her about it, beyond remaining awake until she comes down, and hoping she will find it in her to speak. I am not concerned for some false notion of honor, but any way I might ask her what happened would sound accusing, as if I feared the child's paternity for my own sake.

I wish there were a way to say, _don't carry this child and pretend it's mine. Don't bear something he forced on you. _ I wish I could say, _no one sane expects a woman to bear a child gotten in such a way_. Or even, _your brother was mad, and a sorcerer. Let me talk you out if it. Let me find someone to help you. _

And truly, I wish I could say, _carry the child if you wish it. _ Perhaps Marianne wanted him, in some moment of incestuous fantasy, for longer than a moment. Perhaps she loved him, or who he was before he left for Africa. I would never say a word of reproach. His treatment of her was far past any penance God could ask.

Nothing he did was natural. Can any good come of his cruelty, his sorcery? Could his child be whole?

And yet, I cannot hate him. Killing him was a mercy; he was a tool, no more or less than the beast he led.

I think of his eyes on me, in Sylvia's chamber. On me and on Sylvia. The two of them fooled me entirely, in Sylvia's way, saying that she has done such-and-thus a thing and then letting me believe she would never do it _to me. _ I drank her wine and ate her meat even as she told me she was a poisoner. I never did learn my lesson.

So thus I lay in her bed as Jean-François watched, after she told me plainly he was a _voyeur_ and had watched her with other men. I was warned, and when I discovered it, when I watched him leave Sylvia's chamber, I was still shocked.

And yet, at the same time, not startled at all. Jealous, perhaps, of Sylvia's attention. Ashamed, that I had shared such an intimacy with a man, and more ashamed that it had not been Mani, or even Thomas, who had seen me so exposed.

Aroused, as well. I knew Jean-François for an enemy, even then, and an enemy worth my salt. A man I was drawn to, whose respect I craved, even as I found him weak and wanting.

I wish I could say to Marianne, _I know why you loved him. I wish I had known the man he could have been._

Perhaps, when she comes below, we will speak of it. Or perhaps she will lay her fingers against my lips, again, and we will make love in silence. I will have the truth from her any way she chooses to give it.

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for Empy, in the Yuletide 2006 challenge. Empy and I were matched on a different fandom (Sharpe), but this was another on her list. (I then swore that was the last year I would promise to write "any" character unless I really, truly understood and knew every character.) Ellen Fremedon checked it for grammar mistakes and assured me that the timeline made some kind of sense.
> 
> It's not Oscar quality, but Brotherhood of the Wolf (Le Pacte des Loups) is really chock-full of possibilities: sensual and dreamlike, with the kind of holes that call for fannish explanation. At the end of the film, in the chronologically final scene, one background character steps forward with no explanation: I gave her one. I had a lot of fun writing this.


End file.
